Monitora: monitoring racism in sports

MONITORA project aims to strengthen the capacities and professional skills of civil society organizations, grassroots sport practitioners, and local and national institutions in monitoring and reporting discrimination in the world of sport, increase its visibility, and identify strategic actions to prevent and counter it.

Four Monitora National Reports

The first phase of the Monitora project analysed whether and how discrimination and racism in sport are currently monitored at national and local level in four European countries: Italy, Hungary, Belgium and Finland. The research phase, which lasted six months, involved 20 interviews in each country. The people interviewed were sports practitioners, associations or monitoring bodies; and also academics, journalists and representatives of institutions. The results of the research were compiled in four national reports. The four reports start from the local context in relation to the phenomena of discrimination and racism, with a particular focus on grassroots sport, an environment that often goes unnoticed by the media but is not alien to episodes of racism. As proof of this, each report features exemplary cases of monitoring, or, especially in contexts where the practice of monitoring is still in its infancy, exemplary cases of incidents of discrimination. Key aspects are highlighted: the way in which they were reported by the media, the different actors involved in combating discrimination - sports clubs or third sector bodies - and different modalities - active or passive - put in place in monitoring discrimination in sport.

The four national reports are available on the Project Monitor page on the Cronache di Ordinario Razzismo website.

Read Italian National Report

Read Belgian National Report

Read Finnish National Report

Read Hungarian National Report

Monitora European Report

In addition to the National Reports, as a further output of the Monitora project there is also the European Report "Monitoring Discrimination and Racism in Sport. A scoping of trends and practices in Italy, Belgium, Finland and Hungary", drafted by the University of Liège, which collects the results and best practices observed in the different contexts of the countries involved in the project: Italy, Belgium, Finland and Hungary. In this transnational report, first of all, the local cultural and political debate was analysed, observing trends in the field of discrimination and racism. The report also includes an analysis of existing institutional instruments to counter or react to racist or discriminatory incidents occurring in the sports world and of the various monitoring systems, whether formal or informal, presented in the national reports. The lack of effective and efficient monitoring systems for racism in sport highlights the need for guidelines that not only define the role of monitoring in combating discrimination and racism, but also suggest the best tools to carry it out effectively. In response to this need, the report concludes with some useful recommendations for designing a proposed protocol for monitoring racism and discrimination in sport.

The European Report is available on the Project Monitor page on the Cronache di Ordinario Razzismo website.

Read the European Report

A Protocol proposal for Monitoring Racism in the Sports World

The protocol proposal for monitoring racism in the world of sport developed within the Monitora project is now online.
Systematically monitoring forms of discrimination and racism in grassroots sport is essential to encourage their emergence, spread awareness of their diffusion, and facilitate the promotion of preventive measures as well as protection for those affected by them.
But what exactly does monitoring mean? What methodological approaches and tools can be adopted? What could be the steps of a systematic monitoring process? How to collect the necessary information and how to structure a common European classification system? How can effective monitoring be structured to support services and interventions to support, protect and compensate people who are affected by racist discrimination and violence?
The MONITORA protocol proposal, based on the analysis of existing monitoring experiences in Belgium, Italy, Finland and Hungary, aims to provide useful indications for the construction of systematic initiatives to monitor discrimination and racism in the world of sport, based on a common classification system, at European level. The protocol proposal will be tested in January during four national training meetings aimed at grassroots sports practitioners and activists engaged in the fight against discrimination and will constitute one of the 5 modules of the online training course to be designed in 2024.
The protocol proposal is available in English, Italian, French, Finnish and Hungarian) here:

Protocol for monitoring racism in sport

Seminar “Monitoring racism and discrimination in sport”: the results

On 7 November, the seminar Monitoring racism and discrimination in sport was held online as part of the European project Monitora, Monitoring racism in sport, funded by the European Commission through the Erasmus+ program and coordinated by Lunaria.On 7 November, the seminar Monitoring racism and discrimination in sport was held online as part of the European project Monitora, Monitoring racism in sport, funded by the European Commission through the Erasmus+ programme and coordinated by Lunaria.

The seminar was attended by sports practitioners, club representatives, journalists, academics, activists, social workers and institutional representatives from the various countries involved in the project. The meeting was articulated into a first part in plenary, in which the project was introduced and the transnational report was presented, and a second part, divided into subgroups, to discuss the good practices experienced by the participants, at local or European level, in monitoring and denouncing discrimination and racist violence in grassroots sport.

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Four National Trainings on Monitoring Racism in Sport

The second year of the Monitora project will open with four national trainings that will focus on monitoring racism in sport and will be held in January 2024. The face-to-face trainings will take place in Italy, Belgium, Finland and Hungary and will be aimed at sports practitioners, especially from grassroots sport, but also activists directly involved in services and protection activities against racism and discrimination.

The training will be structured in a three-hour meeting in which we will start by analysing why monitoring incidents of racism and discrimination in sport is important and will end with practical indications on how to actually monitor these cases and then report them in order to protect the rights of the victims. The trainings will be an opportunity to test the monitoring protocol proposal developed within the project.

The national trainings will follow the same structure as the online training module that will be designed in the coming months with the aim of increasing knowledge and providing practical tools especially for those working in the world of sport, but not only, on the monitoring of racism in this field. The training will be hosted on Isca's online platform and will be developed with the collaboration of experts from all project partners and based on the results of the first research phase of the project.

For those interested in taking part in one of the face-to-face trainings or for more information, below are the contact e-mail addresses for each partner country: